The Equation of Unequal Things
by LucyToo
Summary: Bruce has stumbled on a way to rid himself of the Hulk. Despite already being kidnapped and injured because of his inability to transform, he is thrilled to be rid of the Other Guy. When news of his Hulk-free life spreads his future at SHIELD, his truce with the US Army, and his life are put into jeopardy. Which is all well and good; Tony just really wants his friend back.
1. Chapter 1

_Note: This is strictly movie-canon Avengers. Coulson is alive here without much explanation, because we all know he's alive, damn it. I am not a physicist, biologist, nor a psychologist, so take all theories with giant grains of salt. Also, my interpretation of the entire relationship between Bruce and the Hulk is different from most people's (and comic canon itself), so if you prefer your Hulk to be a big dumb manchild with his own separate persona, you might get mad at me. Thanks to Troy and Wikipedia for providing scientific background (one source slightly more reliable than the other)._

* * *

"Okay, look, this is stupid. Are you seriously telling me that just by wiring the transparency to display an image the durability is compromised?"

"_The tests speak for themselves, sir. Though if you'd like to construct the suit and test it personally..._"

Tony looked up from the displays his fingers were currently dancing over, eyebrow raised. "Drop the sarcasm, JARVIS. I'm annoyed, you're supposed to console me and offer me alternatives."

"_My consolation capabilities seems to be limited, sir. Perhaps a fault in programming._"

Tony smirked faintly, but was already too distracted with the problem at hand to answer. He pulled up a list of the materials he and JARVIS had come up with at the beginning of this particular experiment, passing a few that he already knew wouldn't work and then running the scenario with first one, then two, then three of the better alternate choices. Every result was the same: complete structural failure.

He pushed back from the display after the fourth and fifth tests, huffing out an annoyed breath and grabbing the glass of scotch sitting at his side. Glaring at the screen, he sipped thoughtfully.

"So I can either have a suit that won't crumble at the first blow, or I can have an invisible suit."

"_That appears to be the case, sir._"

"Yes, well. That simply won't do." Tony sat back, thinking, swirling some of the scotch around his mouth.

It was SHIELD's fault, this whole thing. Them and their giant invisible airship. After first setting foot on that ship it had hit Tony like a brick to the head, the kind of revelation that made him doubt his own genius. Well, for like a second or two.

Invisibility. How much more amazing would the Iron Man suit be if no one could even see it coming? He had speed, he had firepower, he had vertical-take-off-and-landing capabilities and shock compensation and air conditioning and satellite radio and every other toy he could think of, but it never occurred to him to make the suit completely stealth.

And now, six months later, he finally had the Mark 8 completed and every flaw that was revealed during the battle with the Chitauri corrected, and he had time to dive into this new concept. But he couldn't figure out how to do it.

SHEILD's helicarrier didn't have invisibility, what it had was a complex series of cameras and imaging panels all along its surface. Tony wanted to replicate that system, which seemed easy enough. Pinhole cameras all over the suit would broadcast on the opposing panels, so rather than being invisible he would actually be a walking, flying, fighting video display. When someone saw him from the front what they would see would be what the cameras aiming from behind him saw. In other words, they would see what was on the other side of him.

Stark Industries made pinhole cameras that could be easily wired into the suit, and flexible imaging displays were one of Tony's favorite bits of technology. But the imaging displays were fragile, and having a fragile suit would pretty much guarantee instant death.

At first he pulled up scenarios where he simply attached the paneling to the outside of his existing suit, but he and JARVIS had come up with mobility issues along with blocking off some pretty vital weaponry. So now he was attempting to test the idea of making the displays out of more rugged material, and it seemed he hit another dead end.

Tony Stark did not like dead ends.

A weaker man might give up and design a fragile stealth suit for recon missions and simply switch between that and the current Mark 8 version of the I-Man suit, but that was too much like admitting defeat to satisfy Tony. There was a way to get everything in one package, and he was going to find it.

Eventually. In the meantime he pulled the display back up, going back to that list of materials. "JARVIS, run me a quick cost analysis for suits made up of any of these materials. Let's see if we could make one cheap enough to be disposable."

"_Yes, sir."_

Of course 'cheap enough' for Tony wasn't saying a lot. He had no intention of not making the suit. The question was would it be something he'd let Fury and his little cabal know about and have access to or would he just pull it out on his own for emergencies.

"_Sir, Miss Potts is calling." _

"Mm." Tony pulled up a few of his original notes as he reached over and smacked the intercom button. "Just the woman I need to talk to."

"_Tony, you have-"_

"Hang on for a minute, because there's something important we need to discuss: just because you used to sleep with me doesn't give you the right to add your weird songs into my working playlists, okay?"

"_Tony, shut-"_

"I mean it. If I wanted to listen to Bob Marley I would get high and move into a van at Venice Beach, in that order. I know you think that variety is calming, or whatever, but what I want when I work is loud men and the guitars they are in love with, okay?"

"_Tony!" _

He smiled at the intercom, knowing it would bleed through in his voice. "Miss Potts?"

"_Agent Coulson is here."_

His smile faded and he growled to himself. Fury wanted something. He only sent Phil when it was something he thought Tony wouldn't go along with, knowing how Tony had a soft spot for the agent he'd presumed to be dead at one point.

He sighed loud enough for the intercom to pick up. "What's the schedule look like today?"

"_Meeting with the board in two hours," _she reported, a smile in her own voice at that.

"Oh, hey, send the good agent on up, then." No harm getting called away just in time to miss one of those godforsaken meetings.

"_He's already on the way. Just let me know if you want me to include anything in the meeting, since I'll obviously be running it. Again." _

Tony grinned. He took a moment, as he did at least once a day, to feel smugly pleased that their relationship shifting back to pre-sex status hadn't caused any tension between them.

"The place would fall apart without you, Miss Potts."

"_I'll inform the board of that, Mr. Stark." _The intercom clicked off.

Tony cleared the display on the two panels he'd been working off of – soft spot for Phil aside, he wasn't keen to give SHIELD an insight into his plans. "JARVIS, keep quiet about the tests for now."

"_Of course, sir. Agent Coulson is arriving." _

The elevator doors opened right on time, and Tony grabbed his scotch and headed over to meet Phil halfway. "What the hell, Coulson? You just went on vacation. I thought you'd be sunning it up in lovely tropical Portland for at least a couple of weeks."

Phil Coulson, in his ubiquitous bland yet stylish Super Secret Agent suit and tie, offered his self-contained version of a smile, maybe a little more muted than normal.

"I opted to come back when I got the call. I thought you'd want to accompany me to HQ."

"Yeah, as much as I value your company and everything, I really don't have any urge to get tangled up in some SHIELD shenanigans, or tomfoolery, or whatever it is you kids have going on."

Phil met his eyes, as unruffled by Tony as he ever was. "You want to be involved in this." And, because he was a good guy who didn't get some thrill out of suspense, he went ahead and explained: "We've lost contact with Doctor Banner."

Tony set his scotch down. "We'll take my ride; it's quicker."

* * *

He had JARVIS send to his smart phone copies of every communication he'd received from Bruce Banner in the last few weeks, and on the jet-ride down the seaboard to rendezvous with SHIELD's helicarrier he thumbed through a set of emails, recordings of brief phone calls, and a few scanned postcards from various exotic addresses. All which were the results of Tony's having forced Bruce, under punishment of being hunted down and dragged back to civilization, to keep in touch.

He hadn't been able to talk Bruce into sticking around New York for more than a few days after the battle with Loki's little alien friends, but even as Tony dropped Bruce off at the Port Authority he had spent the entire drive issuing a stern series of threats if he didn't hear from Bruce.

And, to be honest, he wasn't sure quite why he was so vehement.

Bruce was a good guy, and his big scary alter-ego saved Tony's life, as the story had been recounted to Tony. But Tony Stark was not a man driven to remain in contact with very many people at all. He was rich: destined to have a million acquaintances and the smallest handful of actual friends. That was how he liked it.

But he couldn't stop himself from trying to push the issue with Bruce.

The man was a rarity, even more than the radiation accident and giant green alter ego would suggest. He was truly brilliant, a compliment that Tony issued rarely if at all. He was humble, resourceful, used to living on the run and surviving on the bare minimum. Quiet, unassuming, grateful for kindnesses.

Personality-wise he was the antithesis of Tony Stark, despite all their similarities. They both had overbearing fathers whose lines of work they followed in. They had both been exceptional students with subversive histories and an endless hunger for expending possibilities. And they had both become their own experiments.

Tony's had gone well. Bruce's had not. And at that point their lives veered wildly far apart.

Tony's face was in every magazine and on every news broadcast. He was the new American Hero, the first to ever reclaim the crown worn by Captain America in the forties. When the government got too close to interfering, he simply batted them back with a wave of his hand and a legion of lawyers. He was constantly monitoring and improving the experimental technology inside his body, with no limitations to what he could do.

Bruce...well. Tony had read Bruce's file through a couple of times the night before he met the man, intrigued by his work and familiar with his name thanks to both research papers he had published and the decimation in New York years ago. Since the battle with Loki he'd learned bits and pieces more about the man, first at Stark Towers and then in emails and phone calls.

Bruce was a victim of his own experiment. A man left utterly without resources or help, hiding from the world and from his own mistakes. Bruce was what Tony Stark might have been, if Tony didn't have the money and the luck that he had. If Obediah Stane had succeeded in his plans, taken his company and his fortune and left Tony running for his life.

Tony felt a kinship with Bruce, hard to explain but not hard to understand. The fact that Bruce was a fascinating guy with a shy smile and a rare good heart, that was just icing on the cake. Tony simply _liked_ the time that they spent together, and he wasn't a man who easily accepted it when people he liked needed things that they weren't getting. Bruce had suffered for too long without any help, and Tony didn't like the injustice of that.

He also wasn't very pleased with what he was finding out from JARVIS.

"C_ommunication from Doctor Banner decreased by fifty percent in the last two months, and his final recorded communication was a phone call fourteen days ago received from a satellite phone outside of Cairo. The doctor chose not to leave a message when his call went unanswered. A postcard received the following week was postmarked prior to that call." _

Tony scowled at the small panel in his hand, stretching his fingers to enlarge the scan of the postcard. The front was a touristy shot of the Pyramids, and on the back was Bruce's normal messy scrawl.

_'Heading south from here, will email soon as I'm able. For some reason not getting the hang of Arabic language. Wonder if I can make myself forget French and clear up some space on the mental hard drive. _Parler Français est surfait, de toute façon. _-B'_

Short and sweet, a little self-effacing humor...pretty typical from Bruce as far as postcards went. There certainly didn't seem to be any indication that anything was wrong.

He shut off the display and turned to Coulson. "Tell me everything you know."

Phil had gone through this with him at the start of the trip, but he turned to Tony without complaint and recited the details again:

"SHIELD had Doctor Banner under watch for months prior to his being called in for the Avengers Initiative. After the group went its separate ways, Director Fury requested, and the doctor agreed, that the watch on him would continue and that he was to check in himself at regular intervals. This is for the doctor's own benefit: SHIELD has kept the government and certain other parties from getting too close to Doctor Banner, and knowledge of his whereabouts is a must for that purpose."

That purpose and others, Tony was sure, but he didn't bother to say anything. SHIELD had their own reasons for everything that they did, but then Bruce had his own reasons for allowing it. Maybe Fury thought that appealing to Bruce's sense of self-preservation was the way to go, but Tony knew that Bruce only allowed the agency to monitor him for the protection of people around him in case he ever suffered a lapse and let his giant green friend come out to play.

"One week ago we lost contact with Doctor Banner," Phil went on. "As his location was incredibly remote this didn't immediately sent up any alarms, but this morning something happened that gave us reason to suspect that the doctor is actually missing, and not simply out of reach. What that something is I've not yet been read in on."

Tony frowned at him, but drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair instead of wasting his breath grousing about SHIELD and their secrecy. He should have been in the suit halfway to Africa by then instead of wasting time meeting Fury for some face to face briefing.

Two weeks since he last heard from Bruce, and Tony hadn't even noticed. Damn it, and damn Bruce's insistence on skulking around the edges of civilization and putting himself in bad situations in the first place.

Obviously once this little mess got sorted out Tony was going to have to take a hardline approach and get Bruce out of the trenches and back into a lab where he belonged.

* * *

"Jiidali, Somalia," is how Nick Fury made his entrance into the meeting room he shunted Tony and Coulson both into when they arrived.

Tony nodded his thanks and stood up to leave.

"Do I look like I'm finished?" Fury asked, pointing at the chair Tony left behind. "You think I brought you here just to say Jiidali, Somalia to your face?"

"You really think your motivations are that important to me right now?" Tony asked in return, standing right where he was, thank you. "I could be there by now if-"

"And the good doctor could be a pile of ashes, but I don't like to speak in hypotheticals. Sit."

Tony scowled, but Fury's eye seemed serious, and he dropped back into his chair after a moment. "Well?"

"We've got agents approaching the area, so I don't need you going off half-cocked. Coulson, appreciate you coming in." Fury nodded Phil to sit as well. "I'll make this short. This morning we intercepted communication going to the US Embassy in Djibouti from a doctor working in Jiidali. According to her there was an American doctor assisting her in rebuilding a clinic and a local militia dragged him off in the night, apparently not too keen on the idea. She first reported it four days ago, and this morning she was looking for an update."

Tony sat up. "Why the hell was I not brought into this four days-"

Fury held up a hand. "We weren't aware of the first call. Djibouti has no political influence in Somalia, and the embassy had no record of any US citizens traveling through Somalia so they dismissed it without follow up. For the past two days we've been monitoring communications in the area simply due to Banner's extended silence, and we were alerted when she used his name during this second call."

"So you guys do monitor private calls when you want to. Good to know."

"You complaining?" Fury regarded him.

Tony glared right back at him. "So why couldn't you tell me all this on my way to Africa?"

"Because we don't believe for a minute that this is simply a territorial dispute from some local African militia," Fury answered tersely. "Otherwise Doctor Banner would have pulled his green act and gotten away by now, and our people would have found him. Whoever this is has him under wraps, which means they have the capability to keep the Hulk under wraps, which means that this isn't just some random act against a tourist."

Tony sat back at that, fingers tapping against the heavy table in front of him. The man had a point: Bruce might have been an easy-going guy most of the time, but he would be a hard man to keep prisoner.

Fury relaxed when Tony didn't bother to argue. "Now, like I said, we've got agents nearing the area. I want you down there, but I want you coordinating with us, not going off on your own. Our goal here is to recover Banner alive and well, I'm sure you can work with us on that. I called in Romanoff from assignment in Morocco, she'll be leading this charge."

Tony nodded. Natasha he could definitely work with. "Fine. You have my word I will be a good boy and play in the sandbox with the rest of your agents. Now can I please get the hell out of here?"

Fury stared at him, hard, his patchless eye narrowed.

Tony returned the look, annoyed at the delay but unworried. They called him in because they wanted him out there, and hell, he'd proven himself practically boyscout material during the first big Avengers outing.

Sure enough Fury nodded a moment later. "Go. We'll wire in communication from Romanoff on site once you're close."

Tony shot up out of his chair and strode for the door.

"Stark."

He growled out an irritated sound, but paused to look back at Fury.

Fury studied him. "There's another reason why Banner might not have been able to escape. If they took him by surprise they could have gotten a shot in before he had a chance to transform. If that's the case..."

Tony started thinking instantly about a shallow grave in the African desert, and his fists clenched.

"...don't start some international incident. In that suit you're too recognizable to get away with some kind of revenge killing." Fury's mouth was tight, grim. "So let Romanoff handle it."

Tony's mouth quirked up slightly in surprise, but he nodded and headed out the door. He had his arguments with SHIELD and Fury and the whole racket, but Fury all but sanctioning vengeance in case their missing doc was dead made him feel better about the entire relationship.

* * *

The problem, as reported by Natasha Romanoff as Tony blasted across the heart of Africa, was that from everything she and the other SHIELD watchdogs could tell, there was absolutely nothing special about the gunmen patrolling Jiidali. There were no mysterious new members who might have represented a third party's involvement in grabbing Bruce, no strange behavior before or after Bruce vanished.

The militia even had a history with the woman who reported Bruce taken, a doctor who had done battle with militias for years while establishing clinics and women's health centers around the disputed territories of Somalia. They had made their displeasure about the clinic known before Bruce ever showed up, and the doctor was sure that being an outsider helping establish the clinic was what had gotten Bruce grabbed.

She seemed startled at the idea that Bruce might have attracted their attention because of who he was personally. She had no idea that there was anything remarkable about him. Well, anything beyond his sheer presence as a lone American man looking for ways to help out a people he didn't belong to.

Same old Bruce, Tony couldn't help but think, even as he grew more and more sure that Fury's surprise-bullet theory might have some real traction. It seemed like the only way to explain Bruce's continued disappearance. This militia had a narrow reach in a small part of a poor country. They stayed in huts, not underground bunkers where Hulk-proof rooms might have been constructed.

"How sure are we that he didn't escape? The Hulk could have taken him to the middle of the desert before he changed back, maybe he's just out of our sight?"

"_Thought about that, but we can't see any signs of Hulk activity around the village at all. There's a lot of warfare and destruction around here, but Hulk still would have left some obvious traces if he'd busted out of one of these buildings and gone bounding into the desert." _

"I don't like it," Tony retorted grimly as JARVIS increased the GPS display in his view to show that he was within minutes of Natasha's location.

"_You think anyone likes this, Stark? We know where these guys spend their nights, and Doctor Sahra can point us towards a couple of their favorite stops between this village and the nearest along the east-west road here. If we can't find him there _then_ we'll start planning for searching the rest of the continent, okay?" _

"Yeah, yeah. Touchy." If Tony had been in a better mood he might have teased Miss Super Agent for that hint of nerves in her voice. He suspected Natasha hadn't quite gotten over her initial fear of the Hulk, mostly because she was a woman who felt fear so incredibly rarely. Not even SHIELD had yet come up with a decent way to sedate or corner or otherwise contain the Hulk if he started rampaging.

Still, Tony didn't see the big deal. Hulk seemed to be a brainless id monster, but the beast knew who his friends were. He proved that when he came out of nowhere to save Tony from a dead fall in the middle of Manhattan months ago.

Tony found the idea of being scared of Bruce in either of his forms to be pretty ludicrous. But he wanted to actually get his hands on the man before he'd relax enough to give Natasha shit over her fear.

"Alright, I'm approaching the village from the west."

"_I sent a scan of the map the doctor made for us to your phone, I'm assuming you can pull that up?" _

JARVIS obeyed without Tony having to ask, and as he angled the suit downward he studied the rough map and its inked-out target locations. "Got it."

"_Target X, Stark. We're going in quietly if we can. Watch the perimeter. If anyone stars shooting then just come in blasting. Preferably the bad people." _

Tony scowled at the idea of playing guard dog while the others went in after his pal, but he gave a reluctant affirmative and drew himself up into a level sweep. Jarvis superimposed the map over the GPS and Tony angled towards the X'd location, spotting the top of a broad, flat little clay building.

He barely spotted a disruption in the shadows that must have been Natasha moving towards the building, and he forced himself to ignore her and sweep in a circle over the hut, watching the roads and hills beyond for any signs of ambush. It was close to three AM local time, and everything seemed silent around them. Hot and dry and still.

Everything was silent below, silent from the communicators, and on his third sweep around the hut he was ready to start asking for updates. That's when he spotted a jeep heading up over a hill and down the broken road towards the hut.

"Looks like you're about to have visitors. Want me to head them off?"

"_Affirmative. Let's wake these guys up." _

Tony grinned and arced down, blasting his propulsion system to bring him in a fast, straight line. He pulled up to a stop a few feet over the damaged road, and the headlight from the jeep a good twenty yards away caught his suit. The jeep slammed to a stop, and bodies jumped out from either side, calling out in a staccato language Tony didn't come close to speaking.

Suddenly the horn of the jeep shattered the silence, and Tony readied his weapons systems.

But the horn wasn't followed by gunfire. Instead the voices called out louder, and he could have sworn he heard 'Iron Man' mixed into the foreign words. One of the silhouetted men held up a rifle, waving it in the air.

Tony smirked to himself when he realized what was happening, and he lofted a hand to wave back. "Always good to meet a fan," he murmured to himself before he clicked the communicator back on. "The hells going on in there, Tash?"

"_We've got him. Repeat: Banner is here and recovered, enemies are dispatched. Safe to come out?" _

"Well. That was easy." Tony shot another look at the jeep full of armed fanboys before he twisted and took off back towards the hut. He wasn't sure he trusted easy, especially considering the mystery of Bruce's 'capture' in the first place. "Safe enough. Got a jeep out here, maybe five men, but so far no signs of aggression. I'll keep on 'em in case that changes."

"_We're coming out." _

The laughing and shouting men from the jeep stopped laughing and started barking out more aggressive-sounding words when black-clad agents emerged from their little HQ, but Tony was bemused to see that they seemed more annoyed than enraged.

Just a bunch of local gunmen, Jesus. Probably had no clue what to even do with the strange man they'd gotten their hands on. What the hell was all this? It made no sense.

Tony twisted towards them when a shot rang out, but the one guy clutching his rifle was pointing it straight up. Irritated, not deadly.

"_Stark, you think you can carry Banner back to-" _

"Yeah." He turned instantly, hovering closer to the door, his bemusement fading when he saw the man Natasha and another agent were dragging out between them.

Fanboys, maybe, but they sure as shit weren't playing around when they grabbed him. Tony couldn't tell if Bruce was conscious, but his head lolled and his feet dragged and his clothes looked shredded enough to be post-Hulk. But bloody, which was definitely not typical.

Tony swooped down and Natasha helped load Bruce against his suit. Tony looped an arm tightly around his chest to make sure he was secure.

She frowned up at him grimly. "There's a chopper south of the village, landing zone's marked on the map. Drop him there. We'll take care of these guys if they decide to lodge a protest. And don't call me Tash."

Tony nodded once, taking off straight up, carrying his load close to his chest as JARVIS brought the map back up. He headed for the small LZ and within a minute was setting down on his feet beside more black-clad agents standing watch around a dark stealth helicopter.

Tony let them take Bruce from him, but once he got his helmet off he was right behind them. There was a woman waiting in the chopper, older, dark-skinned, regal in her colorful robes. She bent over Bruce instantly and Tony knew she must have been the doctor he'd been working with.

He pushed past the agents to get to Bruce's other side, and flashed an instant if shaky grin when he realized that Bruce's eyes were half open behind the bruises trying to swell them shut.

He leaned in, ignoring the sounds of footsteps pounding around the copter and the woman's low voice as her hands moved over Bruce to check his injuries. He waved a hand near Bruce's eyes, grinning unevenly when Bruce blinked and looked towards him, unfocused but aware.

"What the hell, doc?" Tony asked, voice light despite the tension thrumming through him. "You just looking for attention? How'd you end up getting yourself caught by some teenagers with twenty-year-old guns?"

Bruce's mouth curved upward in a faint smile, eyes still glassy. "Tony?"

"Hey." Tony leaned in closer, something in his chest warming a little at that faint smile. But the basic question remained, and he tried to get Bruce's eyes to focus on him. "What's going on here, Bruce? The Hulk should have gotten you away from these guys before they managed to lay a hand on you."

Bruce just smiled, unfocused but strangely peaceful. "He's gone," he murmured, voice slurring.

"Who's gone?" Tony asked sharply, even as the doctor tried to shush him and pull Bruce's attention to her. "Bruce?"

Bruce looked from the doctor back to Tony, the smile never diminishing despite a cracked lip, blood tracking down his chin and bruises marking skin bared by his torn clothes. "He's really gone," he slurred out, eyes shutting and smile fading but not disappearing.

Tony looked up as people loaded onto the chopper around him, and Natasha was suddenly there calling something out to him, pushing him down away from the chopper and getting on in his place.

Tony backed up as the chopper took to the air. He shoved the helmet back on and felt the suit grip it and slide it into place, and he took off to follow the chopper back to whatever base SHIELD had nearby.

Successful rescue mission, quick and quiet and clean. But he couldn't help but feel even more worried than he had been on the way down.

* * *

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

_To Ghibligirl91: Yes, this will be slash. But I don't consider changing Pepper and Tony's relationship to be cheating or oversimplifying. I'm not pushing her aside, and there will be more details about their history later. I just didn't think full exposition was necessary at the start when it has nothing to do with the plot. I hope that makes sense. :)_

* * *

Tony followed the chopper across the border and the jeeps that then carried the group of agents and their newly-rescued charge up to the US Embassy in Djibouti, which was the closest spot SHIELD could commandeer on short notice. He let jumpsuited, expressionless SHIELD lackeys scour his suit with some chemical wash, laughing when a masked agent asked if he could kindly remove the suit and take a decontamination shower with the others. Like the thing popped right off.

Once Tony's metal shell was clean enough to be deemed safe he set out to explore the embassy, finding Natasha, damp haired and wearing slim shorts and a man's undershirt that she'd found God knows where, on a remote video call with Fury.

"We're destroying that hut they were holding him in, since his blood is all over the place," she was saying as Tony walked in, nodding at him when she noticed him there.

"_And the men who took him?"_

"Sick, dying, every one of them," she reported, including Tony in the update with a glance. "The ones that were in the hut might have associates in the village who've gotten sick too; we've got men on the ground and we'll update the doctor here in case she sees any cases back at her clinic. I don't know if the Army still monitors for cases of gamma poisoning, but we'll keep it contained."

Radiation sickness. Bruce's blood was flooded with gamma radiation. Tony didn't think about that when he saw the unfamiliar sight of blood on Bruce's clothes and skin. Bruce had never been beaten enough to bleed before, not since his initial accident. The Hulk always protected him. When those assholes beat him bloody over a course of days they were unknowingly spattering themselves in radiation. If they didn't do more than just wipe or rinse his blood off of them, they were basically killing themselves slowly.

Justice was a fucked-up thing sometimes.

Tony liked it.

Content that all necessary official things were being handled, he went up to the office of the Embassy that had been turned into a makeshift doctor's office.

Doctor Sahra turned out to be one of those pretty amazing civilians who, when confronted with the weirdness of SHIELD, somehow didn't even blink. She didn't ask why they demanded she wear gloves while patching Bruce up, or why every last rag and sheet and article of clothing that contained his blood was swept away for immediate incineration.

She seemed to be mostly done when Tony showed up, looking up from a clipboard and taking in the suit as Tony came clanking into the room.

He really had to make the damn thing quieter.

She barely raised an eyebrow at him, though. "Mister Stark," she greeted, her voice low and accented and really kind of lovely. Hell, she was lovely herself, in her early sixties maybe, regal and calm-eyed the way people were when there were a lot of hard years survived in their past.

Tony grinned, setting his helmet down on a desk that had been showed out of the way to make room for a cot and medical supplies. "Hi, doc. How's he doing?"

"Bruises, lacerations, nothing that won't heal in a few days' time. He is exhausted and dehydrated: I'd like to put him on a drip, but..." She gestured around at the office around them, both lavishly decorated and completely useless. "Ironically, I lack the most basic equipment."

"I'll take care of that," Tony said confidently. His jet had left New York for Africa hours ago, and he made sure it was well-stocked for any kind of emergencies.

He approached the cot and squinted down at Bruce. Bruce looked haggard, which made sense, but it was worse than a few days getting slapped around would cause. His hair was too long, curling and messy and more gray than Tony remembered. Stubble so long it was almost a beard, eyes sunken in even in unconsciousness. His lips seemed pale, his skin sallow. He was even less substantial than Tony remembered, lean in a way that said he skipped meals regularly.

"Damn it, big guy." Tony sighed. If he knew that Bruce leaving meant that he was also going to completely forget how to take care of himself, Tony would've fought harder to keep him in New York.

"You will take him with you?"

He looked up, remembering the doctor. "Yeah," he answered without hesitation.

Bruce would be lucky if Tony let him out of the tower again. They were friends, they were...well. There was something there, had been from the start. Even before they met. He read Bruce Banner's _file_ and felt a draw. He didn't let things like this happen to his friends. The beatings, yeah, but also the general neglect.

If Bruce wouldn't take care of himself then Tony would damn well do it for him.

Tony studied the woman, this doctor that Bruce had been working with. "How long have you two...?"

"A week," she answered. "Only six days he was here before they took him. We have spoken before, of course. He first contacted me years ago, after a news organization reported on one of my clinics. He had ideas for how to do good things with very little. Helpful suggestions. I think he does this very often, travel to new places and try to help the people there." She looked down at Bruce. "He's a good man. Sad, but good."

Tony smirked faintly. That was Bruce in a nutshell: sad but good. "Why did they grab him?"

She looked back up at Tony. "My work is not popular with many men. They have always tried to stop me. Sometimes they have succeeded, but only temporarily. When they can't strike out against me, they will go after those who help me. Having a foreign man to target was, I think, hard for them to resist."

"So if he wasn't helping you he wouldn't be hurt right now," he said.

"No, he wouldn't." She regarded Tony. "Do you seek to lay blame on someone?"

Tony met her gaze evenly. "Just stating facts, doc."

"It is my duty to inform those who would help me about the dangers. It is their responsibility to make a choice. Doctor Banner understood the risks."

"Easy as that, huh?"

She chuckled, the sound deep and rich and strangely comforting. "Is he a child? Should I have made his choice for him?"

Tony shrugged. He looked down at Bruce, scowling at the thinness in his features, the roughness of his beard and wildness of too-long hair. Every feature seemed to broadcast that this was a man who had no one to care for him, and Tony didn't like that. He didn't like what it said about Tony, that it took a visit from Coulson to even alert him that Bruce was in trouble. The woman in front of him, the one he was apparently trying to blame for all this, was the person who was responsible for SHIELD being alerted and Bruce being helped. If not for her he would have gone on not knowing, and for how long?

He spoke after a moment, oddly hushed. "If I hadn't let him leave six months ago, he wouldn't be hurt right now."

"Ahh." She nodded at that. "You are seeking to assuage yourself from blame, then."

Tony didn't bother to answer. He was a cocky little shit most of the time, he knew that about himself. But when it came to guilt complexes his ran almost as deep as Bruce Banner's did.

"A tiger in a cage is still a tiger, Mister Stark."

He looked at her, brow furrowing.

"You might say to yourself: a tiger is a beautiful animal, but dangerous. I will put bars around it so that people can enjoy its beauty and be unharmed. The only one who suffers is the tiger, who has not lost the instinct to roam and hunt but has had the ability taken from him. Whether you build a cage to keep the people safe or to keep the tiger safe, the result is the same: everyone will be safe, but the animal will slowly go mad." She lay a hand on Bruce's shoulder as he slept on. "You must let people be who they are. Better he be injured from his own choices than made helpless from yours."

Tony studied her, her warm, calm eyes and unflappable gaze. "You ever wanted to live in New York?"

Her eyebrows rose again.

"Seriously. I could use a doctor on staff full-time, and this whole folksy-metaphor talk kinda works for me. All the high-tech equipment you could want, no guys with guns...well, sometimes guys with guns, maybe, but probably a lot less often than here." He flashed his most charming smile, patting the chest plating of his suit. "You'll see a lot of weird stuff. That'd be exciting, right?"

She smiled after a moment. "Men like Doctor Banner, they are good men, but they come and they go. My people need someone who stays."

He returned the smile with a shrug, unsurprised. "Can't blame me for trying."

* * *

Doctor Sahra endeared herself to Tony further by not asking questions, and being a decent lookout when the jet arrived in Djibouti and Tony needed to get Bruce away from SHIELD before Fury showed up throwing around words like 'debriefing' and 'investigation'.

He asked her to pass on a message to Natasha thanking her for the help, and then it was just a matter of lugging Bruce out to the balcony of that office and taking off, flying low and slow to the nearby airport and trying not to aggravate Bruce's injuries.

Natasha must have understood and approved of sneaking Bruce out the back door, because they were close to US airspace by the time Fury found out and contacted him.

"_What the hell do you think you're doing, Stark?"_

Tony appreciated having a private jet in times like this. He loved that he could have his people set up an entire portable hospital room on one end and still be able to open a display for a video call from his leather chair with a glass of scotch in hand, all playboy as far as Fury could see.

"You wanted us to get Banner out, right?"

"_I told you to work with my people, god damn it. That means start to finish, not just until you get what you want." _Fury scowled at him through the screen. _"Bring him to the carrier, and that's an order." _

"Is it? Really?" Tony sipped his drink. "See, the way I understand it, Bruce wasn't on SHIELD business when he got taken, and it wasn't enemies of SHIELD that took him. That makes him just another US citizen running into trouble on vacation, and that makes me free to take him wherever I want to take him."

"_Stark." _Fury glowered at him, but actually seemed temporarily stuck for an argument. _"Something compromised my Hulk, and I want answers. You either bring him to me or you'll have me knocking on your door wherever you do end up."_

"I'll set another place for dinner." Tony smirked and leaned in, but hesitated before cutting off the connection. "Look, Director, my doctors are overpaid because they're the best. I can make him comfortable and get the story out of him easier than you can. He doesn't really dig authority, you know that. Just give me a couple of days to figure out what's up, and I really will bring you over. Dinner, drinks, and all the debriefing you want."

Fury glared at him, arms folding across his chest. It wasn't an entirely unimpressive display of testosterone, but not as effective over a screen as it would have been in person.

"_You have forty-eight hours," _he answered finally, nodding his head at someone off screen to cut the connection off before Tony could.

Tony sat back with a chuckle, pushing the display back and sipping his scotch, looking over at the set-up Pepper had arranged as he was flying out to the Helicarrier at the start of this mess. One of those aforementioned overpaid doctors was earning his keep, monitoring machines and taking notes while Bruce lay sleeping, IV in his arm to hydrate him and gamma radiation monitor humming softly beside it to keep everyone aware of the hazards of the poor guy's bodily fluids.

Tony wasn't about to mention anything to Fury about Bruce's slurred words back in that hut in Somalia. Wasn't any point spreading wild rumors before he knew what Bruce meant, and...if Tony was right, if 'he's gone' really meant that Bruce had somehow gotten rid of the Hulk, that was something that needed to be tightly contained until they figured it out.

The Hulk was a product of radiation exposure and the most bizarre case of good-bad luck in the history of scientific experimentation: he wasn't something Bruce could simply walk away from. He didn't take vacations, he didn't go away. He was in Bruce's blood.

Tony didn't trust that he was 'gone'. If that's what Bruce meant then there was a story behind it that Tony needed to hear and they needed to work to figure out.

Bruce was injured – that was new, and alarming, and it suggested that the Hulk might really be impaired in some way. That had to be figured out, too.

They were scientists. There was an order to things. Hulk being gone, that was just a hypothesis. One of a few possible explanations. Tony was an irresponsible, careless and cocky guy, but he respected the hell out of the scientific process: hypothesis only became theory over testing and experimentation and the ruling out of other hypotheses.

Nothing was true until it was tested.

Forty-eight hours wouldn't be nearly enough time to work all this out, but it would give Tony a clearer picture of the whole thing. Bruce would be back in his right mind by the end of the two days, at least, and together they'd figure out what to tell Fury and how to proceed.

* * *

The overpaid doctor reported the same as the lovely pro-bono Doctor Sahra had – exhaustion, dehydration, a few superficial wounds that would heal in a few days' time. He also pumped a few sedatives into Bruce's IV so they could drive him from the airport to Stark Tower without risking waking him up. Tony had more than a few unused residences in the tower, so he called ahead and had Pepper see to setting up whichever one was closest to Tony's rooms.

He trusted his people to move Bruce from the car up to the room they prepared for him. After getting the Mark 8 into the lab for recharging and the usual minor repairs, Tony headed up to his own rooms to check on the world and how it had moved in his few hours' absence.

First thing, he sent an email to Natasha in thanks and promising a ten thousand dollar dinner at the location of her choice. Within five minutes she responded: _I updated the Cap on everything. You might have visitors soon. So I'll settle for a $5000 dinner._

Tony chuckled, sent her a quick 'You got it' response, and ignored the rest of his emails for a quick call to Pepper, since anything important she'd already know about.

No doubt the intrepid Captain Rogers would show up in a day or two, playing the role of concerned team leader looking after his possibly-damaged compatriot. An overbearing routine, his whole earnest leader-of-men thing. Tony used to resent it before he realized it was actually completely legitimate. Steve was a product of his time (and, of course, lots of experimentation), the ideal hero of World War Two America, trapped in the cesspool that was 2012.

Tony had no problem resenting the guy, the famous hero, the obsession that had thrilled Howard Stark so damned much that he couldn't be bothered to focus on his son. But it was hard to dislike him. Steve was a stranger in a strange land. Tony lost his dad's attention, Steve Rogers had lost everything and everyone he ever knew. Kinda put perspective on things.

When Tony was feeling generous enough to bother with perspective, anyway. Maybe it was easy to feel for the old man, but it was much more fun to poke at him and watch that 1940s Americana routine crackle into something more human.

Steve could be allowed access to Bruce, provided he came in less Normal Rockwell painting and more actual person.

Not yet, though, and Tony made sure to tell Pepper that he wasn't taking any visitors for at least twenty-four hours, however star-spangled they might be. He had work to do, and as much as he'd grown fond of those kooky Avengers they had a way of complicating things.

After hanging up with Pepper and finishing his second scotch, Tony turned his mind towards the possible problem of a Hulk-free Bruce.

"JARVIS, pull up all the files we have on Bruce Banner. Let's recap the details before we try to sort out this mess."

"_On the display, sir. Might I ask what 'mess' we'll be sorting out this time?" _

"You'll know as soon as I know, buddy." Tony leaned against his desk as the 3D display came up and scattered in neat sections around him. His personal history, his 'criminal' activity on the run, the accident itself.

He minimized the personal files and focused on the accident, doing a quick scan of the few details they had about it.

The US Army had claimed most of the notes had been destroyed in the accident, which was complete bullshit but unsurprising considering the source. Tony had met General Ross a few times back when he was in death-merchant mode, and he had no doubt that the man wouldn't give a hint to his own mother if they were playing a round of charades. Guys like him never met a secret they didn't keep. Add to that that Ross and a lot of his brethren seemed to regard Bruce as nothing more than stolen weaponry, and Tony was inclined to think no kind thoughts about any of them.

There were only a couple of pages of notes from Bruce himself, and they all seemed to be pretty superficial. A basic treatise outlining his theory about gamma radiation being the most promising way to recreate the results of the Supersoldier serum, and a report detailing his progress dated a few weeks before the accident itself. Nothing providing details of the actual parameters of the experiment. For those details Tony had to rely on the official reports, heavily redacted and entirely suspect as they were.

There was nothing new to learn from it, though. The basic scenario was just as Tony remembered it: a carefully monitored few seconds of guided gamma exposure followed by the accident itself, the blast of enough pure gamma radiation that Bruce should have died. Hell, he should have dropped into a heap of lifeless matter with a half-life measured in centuries, not decades.

Everything in that room was destroyed. Bruce? Bruce turned green and roared now and then.

Tony wasn't sure if he was fascinated by Bruce because he was the man who made it happen, or fascinated because he simply couldn't figure out what the hell was going on in Bruce's body to make him humanly possible.

The rest of the Avengers Tony could understand. Clint and Natasha were basically just incredibly brave and seriously fucking skilled at what they did. Thor didn't have to fit the standards of logic because he was literally otherworldly. Tony understood his own powers inside and out because he had built himself up basically from scraps. Steve was something of a marvel, but what he was was feasible enough to make sense.

Bruce simply defied all common sense. A person didn't walk out of a room after being exposed to that much radiation. He sure as hell didn't go on to live an normal life with one tick of a side effect. The scenario lacked any kind of logic, and taking a closer look at that side effect, at the basic fact of the Hulk, there were another dozen impossibilities to add to the list.

Tony had watched tapes, recordings from the incident in Harlem a few years back. Even then he had a hard time believing that the beast in those images would simply shrink back to a normal guy when he was done destroying cities. Half the reason he'd encouraged Bruce to embrace the Hulk was because he simply wanted to see it for himself, to prove that the reports were all accurate.

So where did all of that uncertainty leave him now?

Obvious answer: since the Hulk was a virtual impossibility, the idea that he might have just vanished couldn't actually be discounted just because it should have been impossible too. Impossibilities simply couldn't be ruled out.

Which didn't really help anything, but then the odds were slim that he was going to sort out anything without Bruce's input. He might have misunderstood him back in that chopper anyway. The whole problem might be moot.

He minimized the reports with a sigh. "JARVIS, where did they stash our guest?"

"_Doctor Banner is directly below us, sir. There have been no change in heart beat or respiration, he is still unconscious."_

"Mmm. Well, that's starting to bore me. Maybe we should change it."

"_What do you suggest, sir? An airhorn?" _

"Oh ha ha. Calm your gears, voice, I'll take of this myself."

"_'Voice?'"_ JARVIS actually managed to sound offended. _"Need I remind you that I am a-"_

"No, you need not." Tony pushed back from the desk and headed for the door. "I know what you are. I designed you, you're my pride and joy."

"_I should say so." _

With his AI appeased Tony headed out of his room and to the elevator. Enough speculation and musing and theorizing. Time to wake Bruce up and get to the bottom of this.

* * *

tbc


End file.
